Hi all - I wrote awhile back about bringing my son home from his college town, which was very far away. Before he came home, I was so worried I could barely eat. I had no idea what to expect, and I expected the worst. I assumed that I was bringing home forever, although I agreed to keep paying the rent on his house so that he could return for the spring semester, if that turned out to be possible.
Since he got home, the idea of his returning has begun to seem more plausible in some ways and less so in others. On the bad side, his sleep is very messed up (this has been a problem for years), he’s still hearing voices and 3 weeks on Risperdal didn’t make any difference. On the good side, he seems coherent and reasonable, and “himself” - sort of. The “sort of” is the source of my frustration.
He’s been seen a few times by the local FEP program, which I was very excited about (him, less so). He saw their pdoc, and she said his psychosis was atypical and took him off the Risperdal. They wanted to try a program of CBT with him. I was really encouraged by this news, but more than a week has passed with nothing going on. The director had said he had another pdoc appt last Tues, but nobody else seemed to know about it, so the receptionist said she would follow up with my son. Then I went out of town only to find out when I got back that they gave him an appt for Friday and he “forgot”. I wanted to wring his neck. It’s hard enough to get this process going without him sabotaging it. The program is essentially shut down this whole week for an office move, so nothing will happen again until next week at the earliest. Meanwhile, time is passing.
He and I got into it a bit, and it seems like he’s trying to balk on the whole concept of going to therapy. His explanation was that if his normal brain was a 20, the voices took him down to about a 16, but he could learn to live with that. I was astounded to hear this. I was like, “but what if they (the program) can take you back to 20 - or even to 18? What on earth do you have to lose?” I asked if he wanted to return to school - and reminded him that it wasn’t up to me. The school gave him clear requirements in a letter this summer, which include a psychiatric test (this letter has been shared with the program). He actually did not know this. (what the hell - did he read the letter at all, or has he actually forgotten?) He said “well, why haven’t they given me a test then?” and I was exasperated and said “maybe they would have if you had bothered to show up!” He didn’t really have an answer to that.
He left the next day to visit his cousin, about 6 hours away (this visit had been somewhat planned for awhile, though no date had been set - this seemed like a good time since the FEP office is shut down anyway). I’m glad he’s getting to be around someone his own age, and to cap it off, they’ll be traveling another few hours to visit my brother and my mother over the weekend. I think all this is good for him, but it also adds to my unease - I think it’s just having him away from me again after all this time together. I started getting worried that he won’t come back (although I think my nephew will kick him out at some point - especially if I tell him he has to). Or that he’ll come back even more determined not to do therapy. But I suppose my ultimate card is that I will tell him I’m going to sublet his student house if he doesn’t participate. Because he truly can’t go back unless he gets an OK from the doc.